1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for finding product and service related information on the International Information Infrastructure (e.g. the Internet).
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Presently, an enormous amount of time, money and effort is being expended by companies in order to advertise and sell their products and services, and post-purchase product-related information, warranty service and the like. For decades, various types of media have been used to realize such fundamental business functions.
In recent times, there has been a number of significant developments in connection with the global information network called the "Internet", which has greatly influenced many companies to create multi-media Internet Web-sites in order to advertise, sell and maintain their products and services. Examples of such developments include, for example: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) based World Wide Web (WWW) by Tim Berners-Lee; user friendly GUI-based Internet navigation tools, such as the Netscape.RTM. browser from Netscape Communications, Inc., the Internet Explorer.TM. browser from MicroSoft Corporation and the Mosaic.TM. browser from Spyglass Corporation; and the Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) by Mark Pecse. Such recent developments have made it very easy for businesses to create 2-D Hypermedia-based Home Pages and 3-D VR Worlds (i.e. 3-D Web-sites) for the purpose of projecting a desired "corporate image" and providing a backdrop for financial investment solicitation, product and service advertisement, sales and maintenance operations.
Presently, a person desiring to acquire information about any particular product has numerous of available search options. In particular, he or she may attempt to directly contact the manufacturer, wholesaler or reseller via telephone, US mail, e-mail, or the company's World Wide Web-site (WWW), if such a one exists. In order to acquire product information through the seller's WWW site, the inquirer must first determine the location of its WWW site (i.e. Internet address) which oftentimes can involve using Internet Search engines such as Yahoo.RTM., AltaVista.TM., WebCrawler.TM., Lycos.TM., Excite.TM., or the like. This can be a very time consuming process and may lead to a dead end. Upon obtaining the Internet address one must then review the home page of the company's Web-site in order to find where, if at all, information about a particular product resides on the Website. This search process can be time consuming and therefore expensive (in terms of Internet time) and may not locate the desired information on the product of interest.
In some instances, product brochures bear a preprinted Internet address designed to direct or point prospective customers to a particular Web-site where more detailed product information can be found. A recent example of this "preprinted Web Address" pointing technique is the 1996 product brochure published by the Sony Corporation for its Sony.RTM. PCV-70 Personal Computer, which refers prospective customers to the Sony Web Address "http://www.sony.com/pc". While this approach provides a direct way of finding product and service related information on the Internet, it is not without its shortcomings and drawbacks.
In particular, when a company improves, changes or modifies an existing Web-site which publishes product and/or service advertisements and related information, it is difficult (if not impossible) not to change the Internet locations (i.e. Web addresses) at which such product and/or service advertisements and related information appear. Whenever a company decides or is forced to change any of its advertising, marketing and/or public relations firms, there is a substantial likelihood that new Web-sites will be created and launched for particular products and services, and that the Web addresses of such new Web-sites will no longer correspond with the Web addresses on preprinted product and service brochures in currently in circulation. This can result in pointing a consumer to erroneous or vacant Web-sites, which present either old or otherwise outdated product and/or service information, and thereby possibly adversely influencing the consumer's purchasing decision.
Moreover, when a company launches a new Web-site as part of a new advertising and marketing campaign for a particular product or service, any preprinted advertising or marketing material relating to such products and services will not reflect the new Web-site addresses which the campaign is promoting for consumer visitation. This fact about preprinted advertising media renders it difficult to unify new and old advertising media currently in circulation into thematically coherent advertising and marketing campaign. In short, the inherently static nature of the "preprinted Web address" pointing technique described above is wholly incapable of adjusting to the dynamic needs of advertising, marketing and public relations firms alike.
In addition to the above-described techniques, I-World by Mecklermedia has recently launched a commercial product finder database on the Internet called "Internet Shopper". Notably, the "Internet Shopper" database is organized by specific types of product categories covering computer and telecommunication related technologies. While this product information finding service may be helpful to potential consumers of computer or communication equipment, nevertheless it fails to provide an easy way to find information on previously purchased products, or on products outside of the field of communication or computer technology. Consequently, the value of this prior art technique is limited to those considering the purchase of products catalogued within the taxonomy of the "Internet Shopper" directory.
In view of the inherent limitations of I-World's "Internet Shopper" and other product finding directories on the Internet, such as "NetBuyer" by Computer Shopper (at "http://www.netbuyer.com"), the National Information Infrastructure Testbed (NIIT) organization has recently formed a "confidential committee of NIIT members" under the title "Universal Product and Service Code Project". The stated problem addressed by this Project is to determine how to locate specific goods and services on the Internet, and how to compare prices and other critical market information. As publicized in a NIIT Project Abstract, the "Universal Product and Service Code Project seeks to make it easier to electronically locate goods and services on the Internet using universal product and service identifiers and locators. As stated in the Project Abstract, the "NIIT believes that changing the way in which Internet information is organized is fundamental to solving this problem. In the Universal Product and Service Code Project, NIIT members are currently exploring how coding structures can help organize information about products and services accessible using the Internet. NIIT's goal is to inform the development of formalized coding standards that can be used nationally and internationally so that users can locate goods and services through simple searching and browsing methods. In turn, more advanced features, such as comparison shopping, can be added as "intelligent agent" software programs are refined to enable users to search and retrieve products and services linked to these structures.
While the NIIT's Universal Product and Service Code Project seeks ways of locating specific goods and services on the Internet, all proposals therefor recommend the development of formalized coding standards and searching and browsing methods which are expensive and difficult to develop and implement on a world-wide basis. Moreover, such sought after methods will be virtually useless to consumers who have already purchased products and/or services and now seek product and/or service related information on the Internet.
Thus, it is clear that there is great need in the art for a system and method for finding commercial product and service information on the Internet, in a way which avoids the shortcomings and drawbacks of prior art systems, proposals, and methodologies.